


Open Arms

by cosmotronic



Series: Journeys [4]
Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: F/F, Holtzbert Week, Non-Explicit Sex, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-12
Updated: 2017-07-12
Packaged: 2018-12-01 08:17:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11482347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmotronic/pseuds/cosmotronic
Summary: Erin’s wet lips are on hers and Erin’s wet hands are on her wet cheeks and it should be romantic, a kiss in the rain like this. It’s not romantic. It's necessary.Holtzbert Week Day Four.





	Open Arms

**Author's Note:**

> Day four, over the hump.
> 
> And, um, probably the most tenuous Laundry Day fill possible. Clothes get wet, that's about it.

 

The sky cracks and the clouds give up their burden and the heavens open to let it stream through.

It’s thick globs of rain at first, _fat rain_ , odd patters on the ground, polka-dots on the sidewalk.

Then more, and more, until the wet is a sheet sluicing down around the curbs and the buildings and around the crawling vehicles and the pedestrians running for cover and around the lone figure.

A blanket of hazy grey to block the view, a unending roar to muffle the sound of the city.

There is no escape, no safe haven, drops even bouncing back from the ground to attack from below.

The woman’s shoulders slump first, then her head. Weight of water bedraggling her blonde locks, flattening them down about her face. Her layers of clothing, so carefully chosen, are now soaked, sodden, sticking to her skin.

The flowers in her hand, becoming battered and bent until she drops her arm by her side, a few petals detaching to be beaten into the concrete.

Her eyes slide shut. Her amber glasses are useless and she is deafened and she retreats into herself, her only connection to the world the steady hammer blow of nature knocking, mocking against her bowed head.

 

* * *

 

Erin’s entire body aches.

Leg muscles and sinew protesting the unnatural positioning of a cramped low-cost airline seat, untried and untested for her long frame.

Her back berating her unfairly for the hours before that spent slumped in a series of ever less comfortable airport chairs, as she sat and slouched and slumbered through one delay and then another.

And now her shoulders and arms scream as she tries to manhandle her small suitcase through the crowded arrivals lounge, because a baggage handler had somehow managed to break off a wheel between San Francisco and New York.

It’s too warm and too loud and her head hurts and her eyes hurt from a sleep schedule interrupted.

It’s a relief when she steps out into the cool air. She is revived in the fresh balm, for half a second until the first splashes reach her, and she feels like screaming because there is no way she will get a cab, now.

She blasts out a sigh in lieu of that scream, rolls her head back even as her body slumps forward slightly. Her eyes track across the road, through the pitiless and suppressive barrier of rain, and then she sees her.

 

* * *

 

“Holtz!”

It’s heard as though an echo of a dream.

“Holtz! Hey!”

She doesn’t really remember why she is here, or why the voice calling thin and faint through the thunderous downpour is so important.

“Hey- watch it, asshole!”

This not directed at her, it seems, followed closely by the angry reply of a honking car horn.

“Holtz.”

Closer now, clearer.

“Sweetheart?”

A touch on her face, a finger beneath her chin, lifting her. Her eyes jolt open and she is there.

Here.

“Erin! Hey. Um, welcome back.”

Erin’s face is wet and she thinks there might be a taste of salt beneath the raindrops, because Erin’s eyes crinkle and her lips press in a strange half-smile that Holtz has seen before. An indicator of an internal anarchy of joy and disbelief that bends her lover’s face in interesting ways.

“You came to meet me?”

“Um. Yeah. It’s what girlfriends are supposed to do.”

“It’s raining.”

“Um. Yeah.”

For a moment they just stand there and Holtz tries to force _I missed you_ into the drowned air between them. It doesn’t come, she’s paralysed from the throat up. And they never said those words while they were apart because the sharp needles they are writ with are too painful without an immediate healer’s touch.

The touch is a single finger still held under her chin, but it’s Erin who says it first.

“God, Holtz. I missed you so much.”

And then Erin’s wet lips are on hers and Erin’s wet hands are on her wet cheeks and it should be romantic, a kiss in the rain like this. There should be a swell of music and sunshine bursting through crystal droplets to cast a rainbow, and perhaps a ring of applause from passersby holding umbrellas and handing out cheer.

It’s not romantic. It’s rough and damp and it’s noise and the endless rivulets of water on their faces, running down inside their collars. It goes unnoticed by the hurrying city dwellers, all their smiles turned upside down, and ignored by the cowardly sun. But it is necessary, and it’s all the things they could not say across the miles.

They break, rest forehead to forehead, pull back and Holtz grins at the exhausted and soggy vision in front of her.

“You’re getting wet.”

The vision smiles back, salt-sharpened eyes crinkling a little more before they slide downwards, and reshape.

“Are-are those for me?”

She’d forgotten.

The flowers are bent, but still bright. Yellow heart and white corona and a sunny countenance, to rival their own yellow star and to match Erin’s face.

Even now, tired and worn, surrounded by grey sheets of cold misery, Erin _shines_.

Holtz nods, offers the bunch.

Erin takes her bruised flowers and she takes Erin’s broken suitcase and they link their spare arms and begin to walk. They skitter away from the larger puddles, water squelching in their shoes and coursing rivers down their backs as Erin waves her limp bouquet at every yellow cab that hurtles by.

 

* * *

 

The rain slows from raging fury to a light disagreement just as they reach Holtz’s apartment. It’s closer than her own, and neither of them feel like travelling any further after a long slog through the storm and the unending discomfort of a damp and overcrowded subway ride.

Holtz enters in front of her, dropping the suitcase loudly on the scratched and pitted panel floor.

She follows, leans back against the door to hear the click as it closes, thunks her head gently into the wood.

And she can’t help it. She glances at Holtz, tiny and waterlogged and seeming a little lost behind her steamed-up glasses. She looks at the growing puddles about them on the floor and the drunken tilt of her suitcase and the bone-dry umbrella propped by the door and she starts to laugh.

It’s slightly hysterical; she’s so tired and so uncomfortable but she’s _home_.

Holtz raises her eyebrows and pulls her glasses off, rubs at the lenses in vain with a soaked sleeve and Erin’s chest shakes with another round of giggles.

“You okay there, E?”

Her head rolls down and her laughter slows to breaths as she sees the flowers gripped tight in her hand, looks at them properly for the first time.

Her favourite white blooms, a little saddened and battered by circumstance but still pretty and pure. To another, perhaps they would be a tokenistic offering culled from a standard lover’s ritual. To her, the small bouquet is hallowed with precious meaning.

Holtz has slowed, measured the wild spin of her existence and aligned it to her own, and in this new world the simplest gestures have all the deepness of a promise and the strength of a vow.

She lifts her head back up and she’s not even breathing any more as she looks over at her partner, takes her in completely.

The layers of heavy fabric turned dark, clinging to a slender frame stood arms and legs akimbo, dripping. Slapstick funny, empty bucket just out of shot.

Beneath the wet, the outfit; a favourite to rake admiring eyes over on a night out, to take off after. Shirt, vest, jazzy silk tie. Wide-legged pants, high-waisted and calling from another decade. Scuffed brogues, and while she knows the socks won’t match it’s far more put together than Holtz’s usual riot of fashion.

Perfectly made up, just to meet her. Her, wearing casual by rumpled and styled by travel, probably featuring eau de airline.

Erin shakes her head and pushes herself off the door, smile aching her cheeks. Drapes her arms around her girlfriend.

“Yeah. I really am.”

Kisses her. Hard.

And it’s not a romantic kiss. It’s pent-up want and the ache of longing and three weeks of unspoken emotions siphoned into a single action. It’s the stress of a long day burst out through an opened valve. It’s love, but it’s also relief.

The flowers fall to the floor.

 

* * *

 

She can feel her body’s change in state as she melts into the embrace.

It’s slow, loose arms about her shoulders and a firm kiss. Bruising Erin’s pain at their separation into her own body and then sucking on her like precious oxygen taken from a gasping void, like sweet lifeblood to turn into hollow undeath.

She moans, and Erin takes her weakness for surrender and slips her tongue into her mouth. She _is_ weak, always, and she bends for her lover as the long grass bends before a kissing breeze.

She moans again, and Erin _groans_ and it’s a lucky spark and a smoky flame catching. She flushes, can feel the answering heat from her lover, the drops on their skin rushing to a boil.

And the water clogging her clothes rises from her like steam, humid and heavy into the air and her motions are leaded, dreamlike, as they sway and half-stumble further into the apartment, tripping feet taking her backwards under Erin’s insistent lips.

Insistent lips and insistent words.

“Out of these, mm, wet clothes…”

Insistent hands. Erin starts to tug and paw at Holtz’s sodden layers, but the uncoordinated efforts and clammy flesh beneath work cruelly against her.

“Holtz. Mm. Don’t wanna… catch cold…”

They bump into the kitchen countertop, cheap plastic digging into the small of her back as she curves into it, over it. A long body pushed into her space, frustrated fingers, unyielding kiss broken only to beg.

“Jill. Need you…”

She tosses her glasses aside, finally, uncaring as they dance and skitter across the surface. Places her hands over Erin’s own to steady them and smiles into the kiss, wolf wicked, vulture ready.

“So take me.”

 

* * *

 

She’s naked and so is her lover, a trail of damp, discarded clothing breadcrumb obvious from kitchen to bedroom.

They have slowed again, lips red and swollen and chests billowing. A pause in the courses to collect and to measure and compare the feelings stacked upon feverish need.

“I love you.”

“I love you.”

A blink and a breath sighed out and then Holtz smiles her carnivore grin and Erin meets it tooth for tooth.

She is so tired, but she is so _hungry_ and she feels the ravenous call in her stomach and below and she launches herself at Holtz, leaping into unprepared arms.

Her smaller partner staggers for only a second, digs fingers into her flesh and heaves. Erin goes with the motion, climbing, clambering up the strong and slender body. Wraps her legs around a narrow waist and pushes her mouth greedily into upturned lips as Holtz trembles under her weight and her ardour.

She’s ruled by her appetite, can’t help her hips rocking against the flat stomach as they kiss. It’s enough, the straw to break their balance, and they fall backwards onto the messy bed. Something gives under their combined mass and the gravity of their topple, a crack they will frown and fret over later.

For now, they simply devour.

 

* * *

 

Too many days have gone by without the torch of the other set to her dull kindling. Without looks that spark, words that ignite, kisses that flare into more.

And more. Long agonising days with no private whispers in her ear, no little loving looks or gentle unplanned moments, moments where their rightness glows red-orange warm and their connection is forged anew, folded and refolded a thousand times.

They are become brittle apart, and blunted when they come together.

Erin kisses down her body, a quick and irregular series of blows to shatter her quickly. She'll break to pieces, first. They can soothe the cracks later, afterwards, in the glow.

It never surprised her, Erin’s fire. She saw it from the very start, the passion and brimstone beneath. It dismays her, that others see only sputtering surface embers about a dark coal stain of sadness, a feeble warmth and sad pale light.

But Holtz knows that Erin is an inferno, a careless match tossed into the brush. A blowtorch, blue-white heat at the flick of a switch. Holtz bears witness; her lover is Armageddon, and her lover is Rapture.

And despite being drained and doused and tested to the very last flickers of her energy, Erin _burns_.

And she will exist to feed the defiant flame. She _yearns_. Wraps her hand in the tangle of damp and curling red hair, holds tight as though she could bond them forever, and pushes Erin down further.

 

* * *

 

It’s later. After the hunger is satiated, after the flames have consumed the last of their reserves, after the glow has faded to the soft-light comfort of normality and simple closeness, togetherness.

Clothes hang from every surface that is suitable and some that aren’t, draped to dry in curtains of colour and clashing style.

It’s over-warm, humid. The small windows of the apartment bleed condensation, the air is stuffy with moisture and stillness and hints of sex.

On a countertop, a bunch of white and yellow flowers sit in a gradiated glass cylinder, a vase to suit the owner. Pride of place and loved, drooping petals fussily arranged.

The two figures sprawled, pink and clean and dressed to match in a mismatch. Oddments, shorts and shirts belonging to one and not quite fitting the other. Long legs, long arms, a tangle of limbs and two chests gently rising and falling in a lazy beat.

Droopy eyes, small fingers meandering through red hair splayed on a lap as the blonde strokes and chatters away. Sweet nonsense, babbling nothings, to urge the other to drift.

The other speaks, slumber-slurred.

“Holtz?”

“Mm?”

“I really fucking missed you.”

“Mm. I could tell.”

Not quite silence for a time, soft exhalations and twin heartbeats sounding a jungle rhythm in the space between the words.

“Holtz?”

“Mm?”

“Did you miss me?”

The blonde shifts a little at that. Tilts her head down and tenderly brushes a stray strand of auburn from the sleepy, questioning eyes rolled up at her. Her own eyes blurred, face beatific.

“Erin?”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve never missed anyone like I missed you.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> I do that [tumblr](https://cosmotronic87.tumblr.com/) thing so people from all over the world can stroke my hair and tell me I'm pretty.


End file.
